The " Colston " anniversaries at Bristol yesterday week were
not very interesting, except so far as regards a speech from Mr. Richard (M.P. for Merthyr Tydvil) at the Liberal meeting, which seems to prove that the loyalty of the Orthodox Dissenters to Mr. Gladstone is considerably strengthened by his recent pam- phlet :—" With regard to the future, in his opinion there was no possible leader for the Liberal party except Mr. Gladstone. He was their leader, not only by virtue of his surpassing eminence as a statesman and an orator—and in these respects no one ap- proached him but Mr. Bright—but because there was an instinc- tive feeling that Mr. Gladstone was a man to be trusted, from the religious earnestness of his nature, and the depth and sincerity of his convictions. . . . . Mr. Gladstone had, he thought, fallen into one error in his article in the Contemporary Review in not attach- ing sufficient importance to the essence and core of the whole matter—namely, that ritual becomes important only as it becomes the symbol of doctrine. Assuredly, however, there could now be no doubt in any mind that Mr. Gladstone was a sound Protestant at heart, and the stupid calumny which had ruined the minds of large number of old women of both sexes at the last election, that Mr. Gladstone was a Romanist in disguise, would be heard no more." The loyalty of the party is evidently returning rapidly. We only trust that Mr. Gladstone will not throw cold water on it, by declining for another Session the regular duties of the Leader of Opposition. An absent leader is worse than an ineffective leader. He is not only ineffective, but the cause of ineffectiveness in others.
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